Fearful Symmetries

by Thomas F Monteleone

  Elliot ended up working in a lumber mill, making half of his previous salary and sliding slowly under a wave of bills, loan notes, and other economic pressures. First he had to pull his son from private school, then he second-mortgaged the house, and had the car repossessed and the phone disconnected. His wife became disenchanted, then enraged at his inability to support her in her accustomed manner. The pressure continued to build until he thought he would go insane without some kind of release, some of kind of catharsis.

  He was going to Hell in the old handbasket, and he decided that maybe he would take someone with him.

  He would take his revenge. Leo Jr. would pay for his injustices, and he would suffer as no man had ever suffered. And so Elliot Binnder descended into the maelstrom that is the chaos of the broken spirit and the tortured mind, knowing that he would never return.

  The only piece that remained to be fitted into the jigsaw picture of madness was the act itself, which came to him in a moment of pure inspiration—when his wife told him that Mrs. Leo J. Fordham, Jr., had given birth to a baby boy the day before.

  Acting with quiet deliberation, Elliot went into his basement and carefully selected the proper instrument—a linoleum knife from Fordham’s Hardware. Yes, he had thought with a smile.

  This is perfectly ironic. It will do nicely.

  He took a cab downtown to the hospital, took an elevator up to the Maternity Ward, walked the halls as though he might be an impatient expectant father, and waited for the moment when he was unobserved. When it came, he slipped into the supply room and quickly searched through the shelved stacks of linens and gowns until he found the proper disguise…

  …and now the time has come.

  There were the sounds of increased activity outside the small dark room, and Elliot arose quickly, concealing the linoleum knife beneath his surgeon’s gown. Opening the door, he slipped out into the corridor unnoticed by the stream of white-uniformed nurses and orderlies.

  Yes, this was the perfect time.

  He walked down the hall, past the rooms of new mothers, to the glass-windowed nursery. His heart was pounding like a jackhammer in his chest and his spit tasted like paper paste, but it was not from fear, rather from the feeling of approaching triumph. They can’t catch me! he thought and the certainty of that knowledge elated him with a rush of adrenalin. They can’t!

  Striding purposefully, confidently, he pushed through the door to the nursery, where a charge nurse sat at a small desk reading a copy of People magazine.

  “Just a minute, Doctor,” she said. “Can I help you?”

  “Why, yes, you can…you can help me…by going down, bitch!”

  He moved swiftly, striking her in the jaw with his fist. She dropped immediately without a sound, and he rushed past her, into the brightly illuminated, warm room where the tiny clear plastic cribs were arranged in two neat rows. There were at least twenty newborn children, and Elliot knew that he must act quickly.

  Each baby had a little bracelet, and it would be a small matter to search out the one with the Fordham name upon it. Or so he thought. Frantically as he held the tiny, pudgy little wrist of the nearest infant, he tried to make sense of the numbers and letters on the bracelet.

  Christ, it’s some kind of code! No names!

  There was the sound of someone stirring beyond the door. Not much time! I’ve got to do something! He looked up to see his reflection in the glass window of the nursery, and beyond to the glared images of several of the stall watching him with growing horror. He realized that he was holding the linoleum knife in plain view. Don’t panic now! Think…think!

  Taking one step back, he looked over the collection of cribs and knew what he must do.

  It’s the only way to be sure, he thought, as he stooped over the first crib. And it won’t take very long…

  This story represents a kind of victory for me. Pyrrhic, maybe, but still a mark of the triumph of true perseverance.

  Let me explain. When I first started submitting stories for publication on a regular basis in 1970, one of my premier targets (other than the usual Playboy, Penthouse, Atlantic Monthly, New Yorker, and Esquire) was The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, which at the time was being edited by a dignified and courteous man named Edward L. Ferman. Whenever I pulled the last page of my latest story from my typewriter, along with the industry-standard SASE (self-addressed-stamped envelope), I would always send Ed a copy…and he would always attach one of his familiar rejection slips (printed on the backs of extra color pages from previous issues of the magazine) which had the usual “thank-you-for-submitting-your-manuscript-unfortunately, -it-does-not-suit-our-present-needs” stock reply.

  I sent Ferman stories for ten years—24 in all—and he rejected every one of them. The 25th story, he bought. Now, by that time, I had been a professional writer for about eight years, so the sale was not the cause for momentous celebration it may have once been, but it still felt damned good. To finally get let into the clubhouse after banging on the door for so long. And the funny thing was, I don’t think I ever bothered to send F&SF another story…not out of pique or anything like that, but the anthology markets were heating up in the early Eighties, and they were paying far better rates than the little digest-sized magazines could pay.

  As for the story itself, which follows, I got some decent mileage out of it. I sold a teleplay script to a producer name Steve Yeager, who was pitching a Twilight Zone clone to Showtime called Darksides. My story was one of the pilot episodes, but the acting was so abysmal, Showtime thumbed the series down. At least I have a VHS tape of it to show the grandkids…(“Tape? What’s that, Nono?”) And, the late Karl Wagner also selected it for his The Year’s Best Horror Stories Vol. XI.

  People liked it. So will you.

  The nightmare began quite simply.

  In fact, Russell Southers had not the slightest inkling that he was entering into a nightmare at the time. He was passing his Sunday as he always did in the fall: seated before the Zenith Chromacolor III, watching the Giants invent new ways to lose a football game, while his wife Mitzi read the New York Times.

  “Jesus Christ!” yelled Russell, as the Giants’ fullback bucked the middle of the Packer’s goal-line defense for the fourth time without scoring.

  “Oh, Russell, look at this picture…” said Mitzi, showing him a page from The Times Magazine.

  “First down on the two! On the two, and they can’t score! I can’t believe it…”

  “Russell?”

  “What, honey?” He looked at his wife as the thought of how she could dare interrupt him during a football game (especially after thirteen years of marriage) crossed his mind.

  “Look at this picture,” she said again.

  A razor blade commercial blared from the Zenith, and he turned to regard his wife. She was holding up a full-page advertisement from the Times Magazine, which featured a sad-eyed child in rags, framed by a desolate village background. It was a typical plea from one of those foster-parent programs, which sponsor foreign orphans in far-away countries stricken with war, famine, and disease. SPARE THE CHILD said the banner line atop the picture, while smaller print explained the terrible level of life, then informed the reader how much money to send, where, and how the money would help the poor, starving children.

  “Yeah, so what?” asked Russell as he glanced at the page.

  “So what? Russell, look at the little boy. Look at those big, dark eyes! Oh, Russell, how can we sit here—in the lap of luxury—while those little babies are starving all over the world?”

  “Lap of luxury?” The commercial had ended and the Packers were driving upfield from their two-yard line with short passes and power sweeps.

  “Well, you know what I mean, Russell…it says here that we can be foster parents for a child for as little as fifteen dollars a month, and that we’ll get a picture of our child and letters each month, and we can write to him, too.”

  “Uh-huh…” The Giants’ middle linebacker had just
slipped, allowing the Packers’ tight end to snare a look-in pass over the middle. “Jesus!”

  “So I was thinking that we should do something to help. I mean, we pay more than fifteen dollars a month for cable TV, right”

  “What? Oh, yes, Mitzi…” The Packers’ quarterback had just been thrown for a loss, momentarily halting their surge.

  “Well, can we do it?”

  Another commercial, this time about the new Chrysler, hit the screen, and Russell looked at his wife absently. “Do what?”

  “Why, become foster parents! Russell look at this picture!?”

  “I looked at the picture, Mitzi! What do you want me to do with it…frame it and put it over the mantel, for Christ’s sake!”

  Unruffled, Mitzi remained calm. “I said I want to join the ‘Spare the Child’ program, Russell. Can we do it?”

  “What? You want to send money overseas? How do we know the kids are even getting it? Look at that ad—do you know what it costs to run a full-page ad in the Times! They don’t seem like they need our measly fifteen bucks.”

  “Russell, please…” She smiled and tilted her head the way she always did when she wanted something. The game was back on, and he was tired of being interrupted. What the hell? What was another fifteen bucks?

  “All right, Mitzi…if you think we can do it.” He exhaled slowly and returned to his game. The Giants lost anyway.

  About twelve weeks after Russell and Mitzi filled out the Spare the Child application and had sent in their first monthly check (and their second and third), they received a letter and picture from their foster child. The envelope carried the return address of Kona-Pei—a small atoll in the Trobriand Islands group. Russell would not have known this piece of arcane geographical knowledge had he not received an official welcoming/confirming letter from the World Headquarters of Spare the Child several weeks previously. The letter also provided additional data.

  Their foster child’s name was Tnen-Ku. She was a twelve-year-old girl, whose parents had been killed in a fishing-canoe accident, and who now lived at the island’s missionary post, under the guardianship of her kinship-uncle, Goka-Pon, the village shaman.

  Tnen-Ku’s picture was a small, cracked, 4x5 black-and-white Polaroid snap, featuring a gangly prepubescent girl. She had long, straight, dark hair; large, darker almond-eyes; cheekbones like cut-crystal; and a pouting mouth that gave the hint of a wry smile at the corners. She wore a waist-to-knee wraparound skirt and nothing else. Her just-developing breasts were tiny, sun-tanned cones, and she looked oddly, and somewhat chillingly, seductive to Russell when he first looked at her photograph.

  Somewhat fascinated, Russell scanned her first correspondence:

  Dear Second-Papa Russell:

  This is to say many-thanks for becoming my Second-Papa. The U.S.A. money you send will let me not live at Mission all the time. You make my life happy.

  Tnen-Ku

  Mitzi was not altogether pleased with the first correspondence because Russell was named and she was not. And it was Mitzi’s idea in the first place!

  Russell Southers tried to placate his wife by saying that it was probably island custom to address only the male members of families, and that Mitzi could not expect the Trobriand Islanders to be as liberated as all the folks in northern suburban New Jersey. The tactic seemed to please Russell’s wife, and soon her little foster child, Tnen-Ku was the prime subject of conversation and pride at Mitzi’s bridge games and garden parties. In fact, she began carrying the picture of the young girl about in her purse, so that everyone would be able to see what her new child looked like.

  Even though Russell found Mitzi’s behavior effusive and a bit embarrassing, he said nothing. After thirteen years of marriage, if he had discovered anything, it was that as long as the indulgence was not harmful or detrimental, it was usually better to give in to make Mitzi happy. And it seemed as though it was the little things in life that gave his wife the most joy. So fine, thought Russell, what’s fifteen bucks, if it makes my wife happy?

  And so each month, he wrote a check to the Spare the Child Foundation, and about once every third month, he and Mitzi would receive a short, impersonal note from the young island girl with the hauntingly deep, impossibly dark eyes.

  Dear Second-Papa Russell,

  This is to say many-thanks for more U.S.A. dollars. Maybe now I never go back to Mission. My life is happy.

  Tnen-Ku

  Perhaps the most exasperating part of the young girl’s letters was the unvarying sameness of them, and although this did not bother Russell, it began to prey upon Mitzi.

  “You know, Russell, I’m getting sick of this little game,” said Mitzi, out of the blue, while she and Russell were sitting in bed reading together.

  “What little game, honey?” asked Russell absently. He was right in the middle of The Manheist Malefaction, the latest neo-Nazi spy-thriller on The Times bestseller list, and was not surprised to be interrupted by Mitzi’s non sequitur, since it had been one of her most enduring attributes.

  “That foster child thing…” she said in some exasperation, as though Russell should have known what had been preying on her mind.

  “You mean Tnen-Ku? Why? What’s the matter?” Russell laid down the book (he was at a familiar part of the plot—where the confused, but competent, protagonist has just met the standard young and beautiful companion), and looked at his wife.

  “Well,” said Mitzi. “I mean, it’s nice being a foster parent and all that, and I guess I should feel good about helping out a poor child, but…”

  “But what?” asked Russell. “Is it getting to be old hat?”

  “Well, something like that. I mean, those letters she writes, Russell. If you can even call them letters. They’re so boring, and she never says anything interesting, or nice to us…I feel like we’re just being used.”

  “Well, we are being used a little, but that’s what it’s all about, Mitzi.”

  “Maybe so, but I thought it would be more exciting, more gratifying to be a foster parent for a little foreign child…” Mitzi looked to the ceiling and sighed.

  “But we’re supposed to be doing it so that Tnen-Ku feels happier, not necessarily for our own betterment or happiness. Isn’t that what’s important?”

  “Oh, I don’t know, Russell. You’ve seen that picture they sent us…that little girl doesn’t look like she’s so bad off.” Mitzi harrumphed lightly. “She looks like a little tart, if you ask me!”

  Russell chuckled. “Well, you certainly have changed your tune lately.”

  “No, I haven’t! It’s just that being a foster parent isn’t what I thought it would be…”

  “Are you sure that you’re not just getting tired of it, that the novelty’s wearing off? Remember how you were at first about backgammon? The aerobic dancing? And when’s the last time you went out jogging?”

  “Russell, this is different…”

  “Okay, honey. We can drop out of the program anytime you want. We didn’t sign any contract, you know.”

  Mitzi sighed and looked up at the ceiling as though considering the suggestion. “Well if you really don’t think she needs our help…”

  “Wait a minute, this is your idea, remember?” Russell smiled, as it was always Mitzi’s way—to twist things around so that it always seemed like Russell was the one who would bear responsibility for all decisions.

  “Well, I know, but I wouldn’t want to do anything behind your back. Besides, I was thinking that we could use some new drapes in the living room. The sun is starting to fade those gold ones, and we could use that fifteen dollars each month to pay for them…”

  And so, having planted the seed, not another month went by before Mitzi announced to Russell that it was okay to drop out of the Spare the Child program, having already picked up a sample fabric book, trying to decide which new color would look best in her chrome-and-glass living room. Russell wrote a letter to the Spare the Child offices in New York City, politely explaining that fina
ncial pressure had forced them to withdraw from the program. He expressed the hope and good wishes that Tnen-Ku would continue to receive assistance from a new foster parent, and thanked them for the opportunity to be of some help, at least for a brief time.

  Before the new drapes were delivered, he received a letter from the Trobriand Islands:

  Dear Second-Papa Russell,

  The mission-peoples say that you will send no more U.S.A. dollars for me. I am very sad by this.

  That means I must live at Mission again, and I do not like that. Goka-Pon say a father cannot give up his child. Do you know it is forbidden? Please do not stop U.S.A. dollars. For you and me.

  Tnen-Ku

  “Now isn’t that strange,” said Russell, reading the young girl’s letter over a Saturday breakfast. “Forbidden, she says…I wonder what that means? And what about this ‘for you and me’?”

  “Don’t pay any attention to it dear. She’s probably trying to make you feel guilty. You know what they say about people who get used to charity—they lose all incentive to do things for themselves, and all they learn is how to become professional beggars. By us stopping that money, we’re probably doing the best thing in the world for her. Maybe she’ll grow up now, and be somebody.” Mitzi poked at the bacon which sizzled in the pan, turned over the more crispy piece.

  Russell tossed away the letter and did not think about it for several weeks, until he received a plea from the Spare the Child Program to reconsider canceling his donation. It was similar to the form letters one gets from magazines when you have obviously intended to not renew a subscription. He was going to throw it out but decided that a final, short note to the offices would stop any further correspondence. He wrote telling them that he did not intend to contribute to the foster-parent plan ever again and wished that they would stop badgering him. That ended it, or so he thought.